


Esurio

by ishtarelisheba



Series: Tenebrae [3]
Category: Once Upon a Time (TV)
Genre: F/M, Ish promptathon, Mental Health Issues, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-03-15
Updated: 2017-03-15
Packaged: 2018-10-05 12:53:13
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 976
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10308305
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ishtarelisheba/pseuds/ishtarelisheba
Summary: Rumpel deals with the food issues caused by Zelena's starvation and forced feeding during his imprisonment. Follows Immunda.





	

**Author's Note:**

> Prompt - _white-throated-packrat said: Tenebrae/Immunda prompt -- Rumple trying to eat normally again, and having a bad day because of it. Because Zelena fed him slop and then made him a feast and if he didn't come out of that with an eating disorder…_

He was hungry most of the time, but managing to eat was another thing entirely. He’d never done well with eating when he hurt - at least his curse had made it unnecessary, back in the Forest - and the pain that dug its claws in around his heart and the memories together sours his stomach. Most days, he only sits at the dining table for his wife’s sake.

This morning, when he makes his way downstairs to make an attempt at breakfast… there’s porridge on the table. He hesitates in the doorway. Of course there’s porridge. It’s winter. Porridge sticks and warms better than anything else.

There’s a little jar of honey and a great bowl filled with strawberries, and it couldn’t be more obvious that she’s trying to tempt him. She wants him to eat, and he does his level best to eat as much as he can stand, if only to take the worry from her face. Upon seeing that it’s porridge, however, his stomach immediately turns.

But he goes to his wife’s side, kisses her cheek, sits at the head of the table with her near enough that their feet touch beneath it. She pushes the bowl of washed and capped strawberries closer to him - he remembers nudging her with the same motion on many mornings - and he places a few at the side of his bowl. He makes three trips from the honey jar with the dipper. If he eats mostly honey and fruit, he decides, perhaps he can stand it?

He cuts a strawberry in half with the edge of his spoon and fills the bowl of it with a pool of honey and a bare smear of porridge, and he puts it in his mouth. He forces his throat to swallow, and he thinks it’s down. Until he looks at the bowl.

His stomach rebels. It doesn’t look like the gruel that was forced on him. Doesn’t smell like it, doesn’t have the same consistency. But the texture going down his throat…

He raises his hand to his stomach and goes still, hoping that it will pass, and he realizes almost too late that it won’t.

He pushes back from his chair and grabs his cane so that he can hurry to the downstairs bathroom as quickly as possible. Thank the gods there’s sunshine coming through the window, because he couldn’t have taken the split second to hit the light switch. The single bite of breakfast comes up, along with the bit of last night’s dinner he managed, and he isn’t sure whether the shaking and heart pounding and tears on his face when it’s over are from the distress of vomiting or the _distress,_ though the high-pitched feeling of hysteria screaming through him is an indication.

Her heels click on the wooden floor outside of the bathroom and he flushes the toilet before she can come in. He can’t look up at her as she stops at the linen cupboard and crosses to the sink, soaking the cloth with cold water, but he turns his face up obediently when she steps over to his side and leans to press the cloth to the back of his neck. He shivers, but it helps to relieve some of the pressure in his head and the heat in his face.

His wife’s fingers run through the ends of his hair, touching his skin beneath his silk collar. He closes his eyes and tilts his head back, letting himself thrive on her touch. It’s taken him time to reaccustom to kind touch around his face, and he clings to it with that much more desperation now.

His voice rasps when he can speak. “It’s been months. I thought perhaps…”

She frowns in sympathy. “I’m so sorry, I didn’t think-”

“I’m sorry, love,” he says at the same moment, and it’s gotten to the point where she doesn’t respond to his apologies with ‘it’s all right’ or ‘you have nothing to be sorry for,’ he gives them so often. She’s developed a soft expression and a little shake of her head just for them, and it’s what she does now as she strokes his hair, the soft backs of her fingers warming the shell of his ear, and that does more to settle his stomach than the wet washcloth does.

“We could make some toast?” she offers.

He looks up at her, loath to turn her down, but he thinks even bread would make him ill all over again. 

“I’m not hungry,” he says hesitantly, apologetically, and she doesn’t push, only nods. 

“Tea?”

“I’ll be right in,” he says - a nonanswer, because he isn’t yet sure- and curls his hand gently around her ankle. “I’ll clean up and I’ll be right in.”

He brushes his teeth violently, head practically in the sink as he does, avoiding the mirror hanging over it. He changes his undershirt, shirt, waistcoat - he can feel that he’s sweated. He replaces his cufflinks, the tie he’d carefully removed to preserve the knot that his wife tied in it this morning, and his pocketwatch. 

When he ventures back into the dining room, the porridge has been cleared away. He can’t even smell it. All that sits on the table are the strawberries and honey - her hopes at tempting him - and tea. It’s all he can handle, some days; the days when he can’t so much as take scrambled eggs or coffee, plain black tea with too much sugar in will calm his stomach and quiet it.

He takes his seat again, trying to breathe and exist in the sunlight and her eyes, as himself and not as the animal that lived in a storm cellar cage. His wife reaches across the corner of the table to take his hand, and he holds onto her, doing his best to be her husband again.

**Author's Note:**

> Esurio - Latin; to be hungry.


End file.
